[News] Unparalleled Depravity as Israel Implements Its “Final Solution” for Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

andyworthington.co.uk
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/05/17/unparalleled-depravity-as-israel-implements-its-final-solution-for-gaza/>
Unparalleled Depravity as Israel Implements Its “Final Solution” for Gaza
May 17, 2025 by Andy Worthington
------------------------------
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/gaza-may-17-anas-al-sharif.png>A
screenshot from 14 seconds of film taken today (May 17, 2025) by the
Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif, and posted on X
<https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1923717904861741084>, showing the
ongoing destruction and devastation in Gaza.

On the night of May 15, and throughout the darkest hours of the morning of
May 16, the genocidal State of Israel, as it promised ten days before,
launched “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”, a plan that is nothing less than
its “final solution” to the “Palestinian problem”, a plan as inhuman and
depraved as the “final solution” that the Nazis approved for the “Jewish
problem” at the Wannsee Conference in Germany in January 1942, which led,
in the years that followed, to the industrial-scale expansion of
extermination camps.

It ought to be inconceivable that this is happening, because, for 15 and a
half months, from October 2023 to January this year, Israel had already
been engaged in relentless genocidal assaults on the trapped civilian
population in Gaza, in which almost the whole of the built environment was
destroyed with Hiroshima-like fury, and at least 50,000 people, mostly
civilians, were killed.

For six weeks, from January 19 until March 1, the ceaseless slaughter and
destruction seemed to have finally come to an end, via a ceasefire deal
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/01/17/dare-we-hope-that-the-gaza-ceasefire-deal-will-end-the-horror-of-israels-extermination-of-the-palestinian-people/>
in which the bombing stopped and humanitarian aid resumed, and Israeli
hostages, seized on October 7, 2023, were exchanged
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/01/23/gaza-hostage-exchanges-the-90-freed-palestinian-women-and-children-ignored-by-the-western-media/>
for around 1,700 Palestinian prisoners and hostages.

On March 1, however, Israel violently broke the terms of the ceasefire
deal, refusing to proceed to the second phase, which would have seen the
release of the remaining Israeli hostages, and a definitive end to
hostilities, and, yet again, imposing a complete siege on all supplies of
food, water, medical supplies and fuel.

On March 18, Israel resumed its intensive bombing
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/03/19/falsely-blaming-hamas-israel-breaks-the-two-month-ceasefire-resumes-genocidal-slaughter-in-gaza/>,
claiming that both the policy of deliberate starvation and the resumption
of largely arbitrary death from the skies were both necessary and valid as
a means of putting pressure on Hamas to release the last of the hostages,
prior to surrendering and being exiled from Gaza forever.

At this point, the countries of the world, which had largely remained
consciously silent — or had even been directly complicit — as Israel had
shredded every notion of decency and proportionality underpinning the
establishment of international humanitarian law in response to the horrors
of the Second World War should have intervened to stop the resumption of
hostilities.

If nothing else, the ceasefire had exposed the extent of Israel’s
depravity, as, in vast numbers, internally displaced Palestinians returned
from the south to the north
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/01/28/israel-defeated-as-a-million-palestinians-return-to-northern-gaza-from-exile-in-the-south/>,
to discover a landscape of apocalyptic devastation, which they duly filmed
and showed to the world. That ought to have made the imposition of enforced
starvation and the resumption of intensive bombing unthinkable
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/01/21/no-return-to-genocide-as-the-gaza-ceasefire-begins-and-the-extent-of-israels-policy-of-extermination-is-revealed/>,
but instead of banning arms sales and imposing sanctions on Israel to
isolate it, the world still did nothing meaningful.

Criticism of the starvation policy increased, as images of skeletal
children poked at the tattered remains of world leaders’ consciences, and
humanitarian organizations sounded ever more desperate alarms about the
extent of the engineered famine, but the most potent criticism came from
within Israel itself, from the families of the hostages, who insisted,
correctly, that Netanyahu and his government are sacrificing their loved
ones to further his unquenchable bloodlust, and also, cynically, to keep
himself in power, and from former high-ranking officials in the military
and the intelligence services, who, as well as backing the hostages’
families, also oppose the continuation of what former Shin Bet director Ami
Ayalon has described
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/04/29/the-soul-shredding-horror-of-israels-unstoppable-genocide-in-gaza/>
as “a perpetual war with no achievable military objectives and which can
only result in more loss of life and hatred.”

Words, however, are not, and have never been enough to stop Netanyahu and
the far-right genocidal ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who
he relies on to keep himself in power, and so, on May 4, the Israeli
Security Cabinet approved “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” which, as anyone
paying attention should realize, refers to an incident in the Bible when
the Jews slaughtered 120,000 opponents.

The first aspect of the plan, as Netanyahu explained on May 5, called for
the complete military occupation of Gaza. “Israeli soldiers would not go
into Gaza, launch raids and then retreat”, Netanyahu said
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/5/israel-plans-conquest-of-gaza-in-expanded-offensive>.
“The intention is the opposite of that.” Clarifying his message, Israeli
officials told news agencies that the plans included the “conquest” and
“full military occupation of the entire Gaza Strip.”

As Axios <https://www.axios.com/2025/05/05/israel-gaza-destroy-trump-deal>
reported, the plan also called for the IDF “to flatten any buildings that
remain standing”, while “displac[ing] virtually the entire population of 2
million people to a single ‘humanitarian area’” in the south, which
Netanyahu described as being for their “own protection”, although, as I
reported in a recent article, Israel Wants to Kill Everyone in Gaza
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/05/07/israel-wants-to-kill-everyone-in-gaza/>,
the reality was far more sinister, as Israel also envisaged the displaced
population being held in what can only be described as a concentration
camp, run by private contractors, where only those who submit to a security
policy involving biometric screening will be allowed food, which will only
be provided every two weeks, and at the barest of subsistence levels to
prevent death by starvation.

As if all of the above was not enough to demonstrate that Israel was
plumbing new depths of depravity, the final aspect of the plan involved the
illusion of “voluntary migration”, whereby those who find the situation
intolerable will be encouraged to leave Gaza forever, to seek a new life in
other countries, even though there is not, and has never been any
suggestion that any other country on earth is prepared to take in a
significant number of Palestinian refugees.

As the scale of Israel’s malevolent intent became clear, some politicians
and mainstream media outlets in the west began, finally, to voice
criticisms that they had previously refused to entertain, perhaps, I
suspect (and as Jonathan Cook has indicated
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-genocide-wall-silence-finally-starting-crack-why>),
because they could finally see that what Israel was committed to was indeed
a policy of extermination, and that they needed to be able to demonstrate
that they had made at least some effort to condemn it before, eventually,
they will be called upon to answer awkward questions about their
accountability and complicity.

In the UK, the growing dissent was most noticeable last week when a number
of Tory MPs openly spoke out in the House of Commons, with Mark Pritchard
condemning <https://x.com/GuantanamoAndy/status/1920136139307921675> Israel
for its genocide, and admitting that he was wrong to have supported Israel,
“pretty much at all costs”, for the last 20 years, and Kit Malthouse, who
asked <https://x.com/GuantanamoAndy/status/1922744382597292388> what advice
Keir Starmer and his ministers had received regarding the spurious legality
of their actions for “when the reckoning comes.”

Despite the rumblings of dissent, however, the countdown to Israel’s
implementation of its “final solution” proceeded without interruption,
timed, as Israel had openly declared since May 5, to coincide with the end
of Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East, on the morning of May 16.

Slightly preempting the end of Trump’s tour, Israel took advantage of the
fact that May 14 was Independence Day — the 77th anniversary of the
blood-soaked founding of the Israeli state, when Israel’s European Jewish
terrorists established their colonial outpost via the blood of 15,000
Palestinians and the expulsion of 750,000 others — and May 15 was Nakba
Day, when Palestinians mark and mourn the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, by
increasing the scale of its bombing raids.

On Nakba Day itself, at least 143 Palestinians — mostly women and children
— were killed in bombing raids, one of the highest daily death tolls, as
the graph below shows, and as night fell the new operation began in earnest.
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/gaza-daily-death-toll.png>A
graph posted on May 15 by Sky News.

*Israel increases the intensity of its attacks, as “Operation Gideon’s
Chariots” begins*

At 10.20pm on May 15, the Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi posted an
alarming video on X <https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1923126397662380443>, of
massed Israeli tanks and bulldozers preparing to launch a ground invasion
of northern Gaza, and stated, “Heavy reinforcements on the Gaza border
tonight, gearing up for what’s expected to be a brutal slaughterhouse-like
invasion.”

I immediately reposted it
<https://x.com/GuantanamoAndy/status/1923127245775716367>, saying, “This is
absolutely terrifying. Israel appears to be preparing to ‘open the gates of
hell’ on Gaza via a ground invasion, as though, for the last 19 months, it
hadn’t already plumbed unimagined depths of depravity.”

Within two hours, desperate posts began emerging from northern Gaza. The
first I saw, just before midnight, was from Omar Hamad, a pharmacist and
writer, who stated <https://x.com/OmarHamadD/status/1923148873670795667>,
simply, “Worst 2 hrs since the genocide started.”

In the hours that followed, a deluge of desperate messages poured out of
Gaza. Amir, responding to Omar’s post, wrote
<https://x.com/amir1979abcd/status/1923156484688355453>, “Gaza Now Now Now
Please please Israel is raining hell on Gaza right now! Families are being
bombed relentlessly while starving. Children are dying in the dark — no
food, no water, no way out. Non-stop massacres unfolding in real time.”

The screenshots below capture the sense of absolute panic, as death and
destruction rained down on multiple fronts, with numerous commentators
comparing the severity of the attacks to the first days of Israel’s
genocidal assault, back in October 2023.
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/gaza-posts-may-16-2025-scaled.jpeg>

As MO wrote <https://x.com/Abu_Salah9/status/1923144776582316374>:
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/gaza-mo-post-1.png>

An hour later, in his running commentary, MO posted
<https://x.com/Abu_Salah9/status/1923160037272231997>:
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/gaza-mo-post-2.png>

It was via MO, at 1am on May 16, that I first heard
<https://x.com/Abu_Salah9/status/1923167287948755055> that the tanks were
advancing, and that Israeli troops were on the ground, separating the men
from the women and children in a shelter west of Beit Lahia, and
“arresting” them.

“The disaster happened”, MO wrote in another post
<https://x.com/Abu_Salah9/status/1923165249676394583>. “Israeli tanks are
advancing. The Israeli army surrounded a shelter west of Beit Lahia,
carried out arrests among civilians, and demanded via loudspeakers that
displaced women and children evacuate the area.”

Meanwhile, Translating Falasteen (Palestine) reported
<https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1923156287379922982> that quadcopter
drone speakers [were] calling out to besieged civilians in the northwestern
parts of the Gaza Strip: ‘Don’t leave or else you will get shot.’”

Translating Falasteen also posted an audio recording
<https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1923220218337223129> of “an Israeli
occupation soldier us[ing] a Palestinian child as a human shield at a
displacement center in Beit Lahia, ordering him through a megaphone to
enter the building and verify if anyone remained inside”, adding, “The
center, filled with families displaced by months of bombardment, had been
surrounded by the Israeli occupation army in the early hours of the
morning. In a separate recording from the same incident, Israeli forces can
be heard commanding civilians to strip to their underwear.”

By morning, the extent of Israel’s devastation became apparent. At least a
hundred Palestinians had been killed overnight — again, mostly women and
children — as the Israeli military seemed specifically to have targeted
some of the few remaining buildings still standing in northern Gaza, which
were destroyed with entire families inside.

Despite the fact that this clearly fulfilled Israel’s promise “to flatten
any buildings that remain standing” — an instruction that explicitly failed
to even consider any distinction between civilians and combatants — the
mainstream media in the west still largely parroted Israel’s lies. Sky News
<https://news.sky.com/story/a-shortage-of-everything-except-death-how-israel-has-escalated-gaza-bombing-campaign-13369088>,
for example, unquestioningly quoted the IDF stating that “it had struck
‘over 150 terror targets’ across the Gaza Strip in the previous 24 hours —
an average of one airstrike every 10 minutes”, even though there was no
evidence that a single target struck had constituted anything resembling a
legitimate “terror target.”

Last night, the carnage continued, as relentlessly — or worse — than the
night before. In an update around midnight, Omar Hamad posted
<https://x.com/OmarHamadD/status/1923493811818271083>, These hours now are
much worse than yesterday’s hours. The heart can no longer bear it.”

At 12.35pm, Mahmoud Massri, a biomedical engineer, wrote
<https://x.com/MahmoudMassri15/status/1923522768429011292>, “If we die,
don’t forget me … the bombing around us never stops. You won’t forget that
I loved life, that I dreamed endlessly, and that I fought with all my
strength to protect my family. I feel the end is drawing very near … so we
say goodbye, with all the love our hearts can hold.”

Mahmoud survived the night, writing
<https://x.com/MahmoudMassri15/status/1923644627329966113>, at 8.39am, “I
survived one of the hardest nights of my life. The tanks and occupation
vehicles were extremely close, firing randomly — bullets even hit the walls
of the school we are living in. My siblings were terrified, and fear alone
felt like it could kill us. Our energy is completely drained … and now we
are dying of hunger.”

Many others didn’t survive, however, and meanwhile, on Israeli TV, Zvi
Sukkot, a member of the Knesset, and a member of the Religious Zionism
Party, breezily discussed
<https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1923502093802820092> how “Everyone got
used to the idea that [we] can kill 100 Gazans in one night. And nobody in
the world cares.”

Although some world leaders contradicted Sukhot’s words, with Al Jazeera
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/5/16/live-israeli-attacks-kill-more-than-100-palestinians-across-gaza>
reporting that “the leaders of Ireland, Spain, Iceland, Luxembourg, Malta,
Norway and Slovenia” had all “called on Israel to halt its attacks on Gaza
and allow humanitarian aid into the enclave, dubbing the situation a
‘man-made catastrophe’”, nothing beyond words wafted Israel’s way, and, as
has been established over the last 19 months, Israel doesn’t really care
what anyone has to say about its actions.

*The role of Donald Trump*

In all of the above, the most startling absence, internationally, is the
United States.

While Donald Trump has been touring the Gulf, seeking tributes and trade
deals from  Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, he has been
either silent or incoherent regarding Israel’s renewed horror in Gaza.

Initially, some observers hoped that his failure to visit Israel as part of
his four-day tour signified a rift with Netanyahu, but that seems to have
been nothing but projection.

Instead, he allowed Hamas to believe
<https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/witkoff-hamas-trump-deal-edan-alexander-lift-blockade-israel>
that they would receive support from him regarding the reimplementation of
a ceasefire and the resumption of the delivery of humanitarian aid if they
released Edan Alexander, the sole remaining US-Israeli soldier still held
in Gaza as a hostage (or, more accurately, as a prisoner of war).

That, however, turned out to be a mirage when Hamas released Alexander,
only to discover that Trump had failed to do anything to reward them.

Instead, in a rambling message
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/trump-says-us-should-take-gaza-and-turn-it-into-a-freedom-zone/3569218>
delivered to reporters on May 14, he revived the absurd plan
<https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/02/10/trump-unites-the-world-in-support-of-the-palestinians-through-his-call-for-ethnic-cleansing-and-the-us-takeover-of-gaza/>
he had floated in February, when Netanyahu visited the White House, for the
US to take over Gaza.

“Gaza has been a territory of death and destruction for many years”, he
said, adding, “I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good. Make it
a freedom zone, let the United States get involved, and make it just a
freedom zone. Have a real freedom zone, because it seems that Gaza, every
time, every 10 years, it happens, and more than that, it really happens all
throughout, it never solved the Gaza problem. If it’s necessary, I think
I’d be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom
zone, let some good things happen. Put people in homes where they can be
safe.”

He also spoke about October 7, as though he had been specifically briefed
just before the reporters arrived, saying, “Hamas is going to have to be
dealt with. Remember, October 7 was one of the worst days in the history of
the world, I think, not just, not just local to this region, it was one of
the worst, most atrocious attacks anyone’s ever seen.”

Now back in the US, Trump has marked his return by openly reviving the
other absurd, but far more dangerous notion that he floated in February to
the delight of Israel’s far-right — that the population of the Gaza Strip
needs to be relocated for humanitarian reasons, as though he has no idea
that the forced displacement, or ethnic cleansing of an entire population
is one of the gravest crimes imaginable.

Yesterday evening, NBC News
<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-working-plan-move-1-million-palestinians-libya-rcna207224>
reported that, after speaking to five people within the Trump
administration, they were able to confirm that officials are “working on a
plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza
Strip to Libya”, although a spokesperson within the administration later
told the broadcaster, “these reports are untrue”, adding, “The situation on
the ground is untenable for such a plan. Such a plan was not discussed and
makes no sense.”

Nevertheless, the US and Israel have both demonstrated, in recent months,
that they have been shopping around for wildly unsuitable countries to
become accomplices in their grotesque ethnic cleansing fantasies.

Whether or not he even knows it, Trump’s incoherent ramblings about Gaza —
the notion of its complete takeover, the ethnic cleansing of its entire
population, for spurious humanitarian reasons, and his occasional outbursts
about “opening the gates of hell” on Gaza if all the hostages are not
immediately released — have profoundly influenced Israeli policies in the
last few months, and have undoubtedly fed into the development of
“Operation Gideon’s Chariots” as a viable endgame for Israel’s unforgivable
ambitions after 19 months of genocide.

As the “final solution” unfolds, in all its grisly horrors, who could have
foreseen that it would be happening under the watch of a US president who
may not even understand the extent of his involvement in enabling it to
happen?
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